“Oh, my gosh, it’s night and day,” says former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith, when she compares the Progressive Conservative handling of the 2013 flood with the NDP’s fire response today.

As the MLA for devastated High River, she says, “I wasn’t told anything by the government.

“I had to chase around to their press conferences and then try to tell my people what was going on. They didn’t tell the residents anything either — just that they couldn’t go home.”

Smith says today’s fire communication is “brilliant” by comparison. She praises the detailed public briefings and releases, the extended telephone town halls with evacuated residents, and release of satellite maps and other data.

By almost cosmic coincidence, today’s Wildrose leader, Brian Jean, also represents the area at the heart of the disaster, Fort McMurray.

Smith is impressed by the trust Premier Rachel Notley shows in Jean, especially after her own shunning at the hands of Alison Redford’s PCs.

“They’ve briefed Brian from the start,” she says. “They’ve shown him the respect and trust of letting him into the city to see for himself. They respected his role as a local MLA and opposition leader.

“As a result of the access, he was the one who first said the city was still 85 per cent intact.”

Jean toured the city so he could describe the situation to constituents, even though he’d lost his own house to the fire.

To many in Fort Mac, he’s a hero second only to fire Chief Darby Allen, who indelibly described this boreal beast as “a nasty, ugly fire that hasn’t shown any forgiveness.”

Alberta Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, centre, talks with police near a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alta., on Thursday, May 5, 2016. Jean’s house was burned down in the fire. An ever-changing, volatile situation is fraying the nerves of residents and officials alike as a massive wildfire continues to bear down on the Fort McMurray area of northern Alberta.Jason Franson /
The Canadian Press

Notley isn’t concerned when Jean makes himself look good just by doing the right things. She doesn’t appear prone to such petty jealousies.

The shrewder part of the calculation is that Jean’s presence establishes credibility for Notley. They both know the facts in great detail, so their conclusions usually mesh.

Jean agrees with Notley that Fort McMurray can’t bring the evacuees back yet. It’s simply too dangerous, the fire too unpredictable, he says. To this day, officials can’t say for sure that it won’t roar back into the city.

This kind of bipartisan agreement is important to 90,000 evacuees who desperately want to know when they can go home.

It calms fears that they’re being fed a government line, spikes the conspiracy theories that are always waiting to spring up in situations like this, and shows that actual grown-ups are in charge.

“I think the premier has done a good job of keeping Albertans up to date,” says Jean.

“Her arranging for me to get full briefings every day, and on a constant basis, I think that’s been absolutely critical for providing not just Fort McMurray citizens but Albertans the opportunity to see and know first hand what’s going on.”

To round out the all-party harmonics, there’s Don Scott, the former PC advanced education minister who was defeated by Jean last year in the Fort McMurray-Conklin riding.

“I think the premier has done an excellent job,” says Scott, who still isn’t sure if his house is standing. He fled the flames on May 2 with his wife and daughters, ages 11 and seven.

“When I look at what happened, and the quick response, I can only praise them.

“I only hope this response keeps on going because there’s going to be a lot of work.”

Scott says he shares the frustration of other evacuees who don’t know when they’ll go home.

“But I don’t want anybody to go back into an unsafe situation. Safety has to prevail over other things.”

Most of all, he says, “I’ve been happy with the political leadership across the spectrum. I haven’t seen them politicizing anything. They’re trying to work together.”

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If it wasn’t so darn important to our city, there’d be some degree of smug satisfaction with the awkward position in which both the premier and prime minister now find themselves embroiled in with this whole pipeline brouhaha.